Environmental Peacebuilding and civil-military engagement in the Sahel: Turning a threat multiplier into a force multiplier

Environmental Peacebuilding and civil-military engagement in the Sahel:

Turning a threat multiplier into a force multiplier

By Philip Schrooten and Jolan Silkens

The acacia tree as a tool for conflict mitigation in the Sahel region. Photo Kenyon Gerbrandt

The new buzz

As leaders of the Sahel convened in Chad’s capital N'djamena to discuss flaring jihadist violence, Chadian President Déby announced on 15 February 2021 the deployment of an additional 1,200 soldiers to the border zone between Niger, Mali and Burkino Faso.[i][ii] French President Macron also ruled out a withdrawal of forces despite dwindling domestic support for French operations in the region.[iii] Crisis Group expert Hannah Armstrong says one year after France stepped up its military presence in the region, it is as clear as ever that conventional military engagement has failed to deliver a knockout blow to armed jihadist groups.[iv]

Among proponents of the causality between climate and conflict, environmental peacebuilding has become a new buzz term in discussions concerning the future of military operations in the Sahel.[v] Although this correlation cannot be dismissed theoretically, there is less empirical evidence supporting a causality between environment and peace and without a coherent framework, environmental peacebuilding remains a difficult process with methodological flaws and variations.[vi] [vii] Within NATO, for example, environmental issues and climate change are identified as emerging security challenges. However, the organization’s focus lies mainly on strategic issues regarding climate resilience and energy supplies among its adversaries as well as mitigating its own operational footprint.[viii] Still, environmental peacebuilding offers opportunities that could feed an effects-based methodology within the existing Defence, Diplomacy and Development (3D) strategies while reinforcing the civil-military aim for comprehensiveness.[ix]  

In Cooperation and Conflict, Dresse, Fischhendler, Østengaard Nielsen and Zikos start from a tentative but unelaborated idea that environmental peacebuilding rests on the assumption that the biophysical environment’s inherent characteristics can act as incentives for cooperation and peace.[x] The current debate on environmental peacebuilding tends to simplify internal dimensions and discord within local communities.  Like most of the military initiatives undertaken by European allies in the Sahel, the focus within these models lies on an inter-state regional approach from a top-down perspective; a perspective that over the years has proven to be counterproductive.[xi] [xii]  

This publication acknowledges the opportunities linked to the study and practice at the intersection of environment and conflict. However, the focus of this approach should be at the grass-roots level, be human domain inspired and follow a bottom-up approach. Not only are local communities best placed in effectively managing natural resources as well as mitigating environmental conflicts, it is at the community level that we identify the key takeaways and tools supporting effects-based thinking and improvements in comprehensiveness. [xiii]  Think about the prioritizing of resource allocations and the protection of resource rights as tools for finding common ground, gaining increased accessibility amongst actors in the Sahel and countering jihadist recruitment efforts in the long term.

An opportunity for civil-military engagement

The situation in the Sahel is often characterized by its volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous nature. Insecurity, an explosive demographic growth and a pressing age pyramid are challenging the economic reliance on farming and pastoralism. Driven by historical, geographical and political elements, rather than by the climate, issues such as desertification are intensifying factors potentially contributing to an escalation of the existing conflict and increasing the pressure on livelihood and food security.[xiv] Climate change creates conditions outside the control of the local population that cause vulnerabilities that are heavily exploited by various actors in the conflict, including violent extremist organizations (VEO).[xv]

Consequently, environmental peacebuilding is an interdisciplinary concept that aims not so much at the source of conflict but rather possesses conflict resolution potential if – and only if – it involves the underlying low-level human interactions besides political and social settings.[xvi] In our interpretation of environmental peacebuilding, the concept starts from western partner nation soldiers exploiting the very same local vulnerabilities and involves anticipating disasters, developing bounce-back capabilities and mitigation in a stressed social system.[xvii] Indeed, environmental issues have already been included in military analysts’ lists of concerns. The attention given to climate and climate change is however limited to awareness and understanding, without turning this knowledge into military effects. Here we identify both opportunities and tools for a human domain centric approach, as discussed in the next paragraph. The central idea is that by operating at the crossroads of diplomacy, development cooperation and military operations, environmental peacebuilding as a methodology by default requires human factors analysis, influencing capabilities and civil-military cooperation.[xviii]

A toolbox for effects-based thinking

To illustrate environmental peacebuidling as a force multiplier in the Sahel, we refer to Kalilou’s study of a lesser-known local feature at – literally – the very grass-roots level: the Senegalese acacia tree.[xix]  This tree is considered a shared natural resource, characterized by the natural resin it generates – gum Arabic – and valued for its multiple purposes: pastoralists eat the seeds, use the wood for fire and feed the leaves to their animals.[xx] A recent study supports the idea this tree is a valuable tool for conflict mitigation in Niger.[xxi] The production of gum Arabic from the tree aligns with the community stakeholders’ conditions-based fears linked to climate change. It offers a tool to exploit their shared grievances by finding common ground on climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience. The key premise of environmental peacebuilding is that “mutual knowledge of resource depletion and a positive aversion to such depletion leads to cooperation” (SALEEM, 2021).[xxii]

Not only is the acacia tree a tool with which to build confidence between and within disputing local communities.  It is a means to increase popular support and accessibility amongst the local population. In the Sahel, with its remote and tribal character, access to the local population is a precondition for military success, as it is a vital factor in intel-driven operations and influencing activities. This accessibility is however both hampered and a priori exploited by armed groups, having the benefit of being both part of the local population as well as sharing their likely grievances and possible greed.  When assessing people’s motivation to support armed groups, peace and conflict research theories differentiate two major incentives: justice-seeking (grievances) and loot-seeking (greed).[xxiii] Given its political, historical, geographical, ethnic and cultural preconditions, the Sahel is a stage of such grievance-driven insurgencies that are evolving into a greed-based conflict. Once more, it seems that the grievances are the root cause of conflict, whereas the greed - nevertheless the main focus of conventional military presence - is an intensifying factor. Therefore, by contributing to the identification of local grievances, environmental peacebuilding could offer crucial opportunities to increase access to both psychologically and physically distant groups within the local population.

Accessibility is a key element as the closeness of multinational troops to the local population presents implications for contemporary peacebuilding. Therefore, a careful balance between maintaining a robust posture and interfacing with and within the local population helps to strengthen confidence-building measures.[xxiv] As such, incorporating both societal and personal grievances offers not only a risk-assessment tool but also a screening tool to detect and measure sentiment, concerns and radicalization, which in turn is supportive to the effects-based thinking and allows for a continuous process of identification and evaluation of new actors.[xxv] Hence, as the Gum Tree example shows, low-level environmental peacebuilding through discussion groups offers military opportunity to exploit genuine vulnerabilities.

Lastly, creating environmental resilience via environmental peacebuilding could have a promising second order effect in the Sahel region, being the disruption of VEO recruitment potential. Environmental peacebuilding not only opens the doors to identifying local population’s vulnerabilities – by increasing accessibility and popular support – it also offers the tools to exploit these vulnerabilities to influence the local population’s behaviour and judgement.[xxvi] This is, to influence the way they think and feel about local armed groups and the way they act towards them.

Since 2013, popular support for armed groups has been a main challenge in the Sahel with military efforts focussing on how to avert the recruitment of youths by violent groups, including organized crime cartels.[xxvii] Youngsters being a vital source of support for the armed groups, guaranteeing their operational continuity by fulfilling roles ranging from fighters to cooks.[xxviii] It would be a mistake assuming they are all forcibly recruited, trafficked or kidnapped. As Darden points out, youngsters might join voluntarily, sensitive to the appeal of a group-based identity, perceived grievances, cultural threats or the prospect of economic stability, reputation and respect. [xxix] These vulnerabilities are reinforced by a multitude of factors, including environmental conditions. To state it simply: climate change contributes to rising food insecurity, slows down economic development and promotes poverty amongst youngsters in the Sahel, making them more susceptible for armed groups’ narratives based on the prospect of owning cattle, money and respect. Environmental peacebuilding as a research field offers an approach by which we can exploit these very same vulnerabilities. Again, we question the causality between climate and conflict. Still, environmental peacebuilding offers a complementary perspective on conflict resolution efforts. Gum Arabic cultivation initiatives are therefore not to be considered addressing the root cause of conflict. Nevertheless, they contain the instrumental opportunities that support conflict resolution programs from an effects-based angle.[xxx]

Conclusion

The Sahel hosts multiple conflicts, studied by civilian academics and military analysts from multiple perspectives, over the years, focussing on conflict lines, layers and actors. Widening the scope to its fullest, the conflict has been thoroughly examined and dissected into its geographical, generational, societal, religious, economic and political components. Prevailing environmental issues are commonly considered only an intensifying factor, not a root cause. The same can be said for demographic conditions and culturally anchored values as clientelism, paternalism and nepotism. Although environmental causality in conflicts can be questioned, environmental issues can still be viewed as playing a constituent role in civil-military engagement – regardless of whether they are part of the original conflict.

As discussed in this brief, environmental peacebuilding contributes to strategic effects via tactical level relationship-building actions that are focussed on the identification of common environmental threats, mutual knowledge of resource depletion and a positive aversion to such depletion leading to cooperation. It is an approach to reducing violence and local conflict by finding common ground to address environmental challenges. As such, it is an underexplored research field within a military context, yet offering the tools to connect the “low politics” of micro-level cooperation around environmental management to the “high politics” of war and peace.[xxxi]